


like real people do

by alpacasandravens



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (stoner elias), Angst, M/M, Peter is still dead, Recreational Drug Use, elias is a sad little man, not!peter mannequin, post-160
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23644339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacasandravens/pseuds/alpacasandravens
Summary: After the apocalypse, the Stranger decides to send Elias... something. A thank-you present? An instrument of terror? Whatever it is, it looks like Peter and acts like Peter, and that's just more than Elias can handle.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas
Comments: 16
Kudos: 113





	like real people do

**Author's Note:**

> au where there's an Underground station in Chelsea im american and didn't realize there wasn't one when I wrote this

The apocalypse was boring. 

Elias would never tell anyone that, of course. It would undermine the two centuries of planning he put into bringing it about, and besides, he didn’t have anyone to tell. His Archivist was busy hiding in Scotland pretending Elias couldn’t See him, all of the Institute’s employees had stopped coming to work when the sky started blinking at them, and Peter was dead. 

Elias sighed and looked over his desk. It was pristine. It always was. He’d thought about switching out his “Elias Bouchard” nameplate for one that said “Jonah Magnus,” but he’d gotten used to being Elias. It was a nice name. A nice identity. What this identity had been especially good at was a skill Jonah Magnus had been honing for all of his two hundred and forty years: paperwork. And if there was one thing that an apocalypse didn’t have, it was paperwork.

The Ceaseless Watcher didn’t care about which forms Elias initialed or hid incriminating sub-clauses in. The government wasn’t functional enough for him to file his tax forms and then sequester them in his desk. (The joy of filing forms didn’t make up for the amount of money he saved through tax evasion.) He couldn’t Watch his Archivist try to file the statements in the basement, because his Archivist wasn’t here. Finally, and somehow most infuriatingly, he couldn’t file for another divorce with Peter, as Peter was dead.

The Tube still ran, because of course it did. There weren’t any operators anymore, and some cars were as likely to disappear into the dirt as to get you to your station, but if you were so inclined, you could descend the steps and board a train. 

Elias did just that on his way to his flat. He would never have taken the Tube pre-apocalypse. He was above the sweaty, smelly dankness of the trains that had never been cleaned quite thoroughly and teemed with London’s ordinary. But he’d never encountered another person on the Tube since the apocalypse, and it was the little bit of danger in stepping onto the train that thrilled him. The Buried wouldn’t swallow him like any normal person, anyone who hadn’t brought the Dread Powers into this world, but there was always the thought it might. 

The car wasn’t empty that night. That’s not to say there was another person on it, that would be incorrect. The figure sitting ramrod-straight in the far corner of the car was decidedly not a person. Elias hadn’t noticed it when he boarded, and he sighed as he sat down, discreetly checking the seat for cockroaches or other Corruption surprises. He knew the Stranger didn’t like him, but this was really unnecessary. Aside from his Archivist’s little… adventure with plastic explosives, the Eye and the Stranger had left each other well enough alone for decades. The least they could do was continue that streak.

“Oh Eliiiiiias,” a familiar voice trilled. It was deep, too deep to be Nikola, and it had the wrong accent besides, but -

“What do you want? I’d rather hoped my Archivist had killed you properly, though I see I put too much confidence in him.”

Elias would have very much liked to have a newspaper. This was one of a very few moments in which only flipping the page of a newspaper would have the desired dismissive effect, but newspapers had long since dissolved. 

“Oh, he did,” the figure said enthusiastically. Elias felt certain he knew that voice, but the tone was just so very Nikola that he couldn’t quite place it.

“Then why are you here?”

“Aren’t you happy to see me?” the figure asked, standing and moving closer to Elias. The weak Tube lighting revealed a pale face and gray beard topped with a captain’s hat. It had an aggravating smirk on its face that was far too close to the one Elias remembered. 

The creature that was not Peter walked strangely, limbs too stiff one second, too loose the next. It struggled down the aisle toward Elias, seemingly unaware of its body’s difficulties, never once losing that smile.

Elias gave it a quick once-over before staring out into the darkness of the Underground tunnel. “Go away.” 

“That’s no way to treat your husband,” Not!Peter said, a sentence Elias had heard him say so many times, exactly like that. When Elias had gone to donor meetings instead of acquiescing to Peter’s petulant demands (usually to stay and have sex instead). When Elias asked him for a divorce after Peter had leaked Gertrude’s plans to the Vast. 

“You’re not my husband,” Elias observed. “My husband is dead.”

Not!Peter sat down in the seat in front of Elias. His body faced forward, but his head slowly turned around. He looked Elias in the eyes when he spoke. “You wound me. I’m right here!”

“I wish you weren’t.”

“Rude!”

“This is the part where you hide in your void until your feelings aren’t hurt,” Elias said without looking up. “Or can you not do that?”

Not!Peter folded his arms and hmphed. 

“For such a cheap imitation, you really got the level of aggravation down,” Elias observed to no one in particular. 

The train began to slow down. When the doors chimed open, Elias rose. “This is my stop, I’m afraid,” he said with all the airs of mock-politeness. “It hasn’t been a pleasure.”

Inside the train, Not!Peter watched Elias as he walked away. There was something so sad in those fake eyes that Elias almost felt bad. He shook his head to rid himself of the emotion and climbed the stairs out of the station. 

To Elias’s great annoyance, that was not the last time he saw the thing that was not Peter. It was, however, the last time he took the train for a considerable period of time. 

Not!Peter next appeared, to Elias’s extreme dissatisfaction, on the balcony of his apartment. Thus far in the apocalypse, Elias’s flat had been largely normal, a haven from the world outside, and if he was watched from every direction, that was no different than before. So when Not!Peter showed up, it was unusual.

Elias does not drink. He drinks to maintain appearances, a sip from a glass of whiskey at a meeting where the men are trying far too hard to exert their power and influence. But otherwise, he has no interest in alcohol. But Elias was decidedly not sober as he sat on his balcony, which the large, ornately decorated bong next to him could attest to.

“Can’t a man relax in peace?” he grumbled.

Not!Peter perched on the armrest of Elias’s chair. This was not something the normal Peter would have been able to do, as the chair was flimsy and Peter was quite heavy. But the fluidly plastic limbs of Not!Peter balanced with ease. 

“I thought you’d be happy to see me,” it said. “How long has it been since I died? Three months? Four? You must be getting lonely.”

“Five months,” Elias said almost automatically. “And I am most assuredly not.”

“See! You corrected me. You do miss me!”

Elias looked at the sky, which was and had been for some time an unblinking eyeball. “What did I ever do to deserve this?”

“Well to start with, you divorced me six times. You cheated on me in the ‘70s” Not!Peter said, ignoring Elias’s spluttering about Peter’s regular extramarital affairs and holding up a finger for each of Elias’s offenses. “Then you had your Archivist kill me and didn’t even hold a funeral. And then you completed your ritual knowing I wasn’t around to see it.”

“Wasn’t talking to you.”

“Don’t care!”

“Why are you here?”

Not!Peter’s voice was syrupy sweet. “Is it too hard to believe I missed you?”

“Yes.”

“Some people might find it romantic if their dead husband came back to life for them.” It leaned over Elias slightly, body elongating to maintain its balance.

Elias folded his arms.

“Some people,” it continued, “might even welcome their husband home instead of insulting them constantly.”

“If you were my husband instead of a plastic recreation,” Elias said, staring into Not!Peter’s eyes, “I might do that.”

“What’s the difference between a body of plastic and one of fog?” It was startlingly close to Elias now.

“One of them is here.”

Elias lunged forward and kissed Not!Peter. It was alarming, he thought, how much it felt like kissing his Peter. (He hadn’t let himself think of Peter as his for over a century.) There was just something off, a strange rigidity to his mouth, a slight cold feeling different from Peter’s usual ice, the faint smell of chemicals. He reached a hand up to run through Peter’s hair only to find his captain’s hat fused to his head. Undeterred, he grabbed Not!Peter’s collar and pulled him closer.

There was something Elias would never admit to himself. Somehow, he was lonelier without his husband than he ever had been with him. Peter’s last revenge, of sorts. It was a truth relegated to the back of his mind on all days but today, a day when he was home and confronted with a replica of his husband and stoned out of his mind.

The truth was that he missed Peter. He searched for him in the mannequin, hoping to feel something of Peter as he kissed it. He hated the tears he could feel forming in his closed eyes.

“This isn’t working.” Not!Peter pulled away from him. Its featured blurred, mixing and melting until it was no longer recognizably human. “You’re supposed to be afraid.”

“What should I be afraid of?” Elias sighed. “I’ve already lost him.”

The creature morphed into a metallic-looking something that Elias assumed was from a film. It had lots of knives, some of which were spinning. “Does this scare you?” it asked, though it had no mouth.

Elias sat back in his chair. “Just go.” He closed his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave kudos/a comment if you enjoyed! If you want to shout about these bastards with me I'm on tumblr @alpacasandravens !!


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